The Fibre (Fiber) Channel (FC) standard addresses the general need in networking for fast transfers of large amounts of information. FC networks utilize an arrangement of switches, referred to as an FC fabric, to connect various computing devices (e.g., storage arrays, servers, etc.). This approach simplifies the overhead associated with network traffic, since computing devices with FC ports only manage a point to-point connection between those FC ports and the FC fabric.
It is often desirable to merge two FC fabrics to, for example, expand a network or link network devices. When merging, the FC fabrics again go through a build process where a principal switch is selected. The principal switch may be configured to, for example, assign one or more unique domain identifiers (IDs) to each of the FC switches in the merged FC fabric.